Western and Transfers, etc.

Hey everyone! 

Marquiese and Jim are still doing well, Marquiese has become another recent convert that goes out teaching whenever he can. It's so awesome! I'm excited to go out and find more prepared people. 

Elder Villaneda is being transferred away to Meridian (Lansing area) to be a zone leader there. We've really enjoyed our transfer together and I'm a bit surprised we didn't stay another transfer. My new companion will be Elder McMurtrey. I'm very excited! We got to work together (plus Elder Derricott) before we picked up our first trainees. The zone is getting changed up a lot and I'm way pumped. A lot of experienced leadership is coming to the zone to train again before they go home.

This week for us was way good! We found a super cool dude named Cornelius doorknocking. We taught him once and he accepted a date and is excited to learn more! We also got a hold of Ebony again. We're supposed to see her tonight and I'm praying we do because she was super cool. We have been blessed with a lot of success in the past six weeks. We're seeing more and more miracles as we are in our rebuilding stage for the area.

So remember about the zone goal I told you about last week? As a zone we set a goal to get 20 new baptismal dates set by the end of the transfer. When I emailed you last we were at 4 of 20. It came down to the wire, but we hit our goal of 20 new baptismal dates! It was incredible. On Wednesday alone, 9 new dates were set. We were sending texts to the zone every hour (or more) it seemed. On Saturday evening (last night of the transfer) we were at 18. Elder Villaneda and I sat in our truck marveling at how well the zone had done and even more how much Heavenly Father had blessed us. We were a little sad that we had come so close but wouldn't reach the goal. At 9:18 p.m. we got a call from Sturgis telling us that they had set two more people on date that day! We screamed like little girls when they told us. 

I have seen it time after time on my mission. I know that Heavenly Father answers righteous prayers if we have faith in Him. 

"And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you." (3 Nephi 18:20)

So yeah, that's mission life! I love you all, I need to close because Elder Villaneda needs to pack and we need to clean! 

-Elder Schmutz

I picked up some West Coast slang in my time with Elder Villaneda. 

"We out here"